Plamegate

12.23.08

Cheney Admits Plame Role

Mindaugas Kulbis / AP

So much for Bush’s promise that whoever leaked Valerie Plame’s name would be found and punished. According to a secret FBI report leaked to investigative reporter Murray Waas, Dick Cheney admitted to FBI investigators he deliberately rewrote briefing notes for the press to ensure the name of Plame, a CIA agent, would be revealed, to punish her husband Joe Wilson for doubting the existence of Saddam’s WMD program. “That Cheney, by his own admission, had revised the talking points in an effort to have the reporters examine who sent Wilson on the very same day that his chief of staff was disclosing to Miller Plame’s identity as a CIA officer may be the most compelling evidence to date that Cheney himself might have directed Libby to disclose Plame’s identity to Miller and other reporters,” Waas concludes. Libby’s deliberate obfuscation, even though it ensured his conviction for hindering a federal investigation, will ensure that it will never be known whether Cheney ordered Plame’s name leaked, Waas reports.